Cécile Bergeron

Biography

Cécile Bergeron’s life began in the community now called Louiseville, near Lake Saint-Pierre in Québec, Canada, on February 28, 1820 and eventually carried her from Québec to a farming community in Illinois. She was a daughter of Charles Bergeron and Marie-Louise Deblois. At eighteen she married Charles Gagnon, from nearby Saint-Léon-le-Grand, on September 18, 1838. Their daughter Adeline was born the following June. A younger daughter, Barbe, died shortly after her first birthday.

Charles died in September 1846, leaving Cécile a widow at twenty-six. Their son Charles was born the next May, after his father’s death. In August 1848 Cécile married Joseph-Simon Frigon at Saint-Léon-le-Grand. Young Charles died that November. Cécile’s second family included sons Florentin and Séverin.

The Frigon family association places Simon’s move to Illinois around 1856. Its history describes a farm near Martinton, in northeastern Illinois south of Kankakee, close to his brother’s property; its census compilation places Cécile and Simon in Iroquois County in 1860. Their son Florentin became known as Frank B. Florentine, a physician in Saginaw, Michigan. Cécile’s later life thus connected the Québec parishes of her first marriage with an American family spread across Illinois and Michigan. Her burial is associated with Beaverville, also in northeastern Illinois.